


ghosts that we knew

by andibeth82



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Comfort/Angst, Gen, Identity Issues, Memory Loss, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 12:38:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1550765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s not sure why he jumps after the red white and blue soldier, the one that stopped fighting when everything about him suggested that he was supposed to do otherwise, the one that said a name that invoked something that really fucking hurt inside his brain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ghosts that we knew

**Author's Note:**

> My feelings about this film, and the people in it, have left me eternally compromised. 
> 
> Thank you to my constant [bobsessive](bobsessive.tumblr.com) who read this over and confirmed it made her cry.

Bucky Barnes watches Steve Rogers fall.

He watches him sink through open folds of sky like an anchor dropping towards the expanse of blue sea, his body disappearing under the churning waves amidst deteriorating, smoking debris, and he thinks. For the first time, he _think_ s, and it’s like a switch in his brain has been flicked the wrong way, on instead of off or maybe off instead of on.

_Your name is James Buchanan Barnes._

His missions have always come with risks, risks that mean death and risks that mean exposure and risks that mean ultimate undoing. But he’s never allowed himself to be compromised by the things he knows are out to get him and he’s done good for his country, people have said so and that much he’s reminded of, it’s a sure feeling, as sure as the bit in his mouth and the vices on his head and the orders on his tongue.

Soldiers fall all the time. He knows this, because he went to war once and watched them fall, until he fell, and now he spends his life helping others fall. It’s a mission and they’re a mark, he’s never cared about saving them because he’s never had to. Hell, he’s never _wanted_ to.

So he’s not sure why he jumps after the red white and blue soldier, the one that stopped fighting when everything about him suggested that he was supposed to do otherwise, the one that said a name that invoked something that really fucking hurt inside his brain.

But he does it anyway.

 

***

 

The first time he visits, it’s two days before Steve is released from the hospital and five days before he moves from his D.C. apartment to a smaller, more intimate complex in Maryland. Bucky sneaks in through the basement window, his stolen black hoodie casting shadows over his sunken face, his metal arm sweating from where he’s claustrophobically shoved it into a thick leather jacket that he’s pilfered from an unsuspecting punk.

He moves with the speed and agility of someone used to sneaking, used to hiding, used to missions ( _you’re my mission_ ), stopping only when he gets to the room on the third floor, when he can find a crack between the hinges of the door that allows him to peek inside properly and without drawing too much attention.

The soldier is sitting on the bed, and, to put it bluntly, he looks like shit. He’s got a row of stitches lining the curve of his jaw, the rest of his face peppered with a collection of black and red bruises and there are angry scars along the curve of his arms, a bandage covering a portion of his torso. He’s smiling, though, and that’s what Bucky doesn’t understand – he’s _smiling_ , despite the fact he looks like he just lost the worst war of his life in every single way possible.

He’s hunched over on the bed with a dark-skinned man at his side and they’re engrossed in a conversation that the Bucky can’t hear or understand and the friend in the room says something else, and then a few strains of music drift from something clutched inside his palm, which makes the soldier smile wider and suddenly the world feels like it’s closing in, two pieces of metal on the side of his head squeezing his skull into blank nothing, the entire world going noiseless and dark.

He’s made sure he’s okay, this soldier he saved, and that’s all he promised himself he would do once he dragged him ashore, once he made sure he was breathing properly, before leaving his body bloody and battered on the side of the Potomac and stealthily alerting a few uniformed men who happened to be wandering by, searching for signs of wreckage.

A nurse passes on his right, and sound returns, and he leaves before he can think about anything else.

 

***

 

In the cemetery, he hides behind one of the larger trees, scuffs a booted foot into the ground, realizes he’s starting to feel like he’s breaking apart little by little without even knowing why. The sun beats down on his back, warmth drenching the matted mess of dark hair knotted at the edge of his scalp, and it’s hot and suffocating and his metal arm aches with pain and discomfort but he steels his mind against it, focuses on the scene in front of him.

He watches as the redhead approaches and hands over a thick file, and there’s something about her that seems familiar yet foreign at the same time, something in the way she moves and in the way that she guards herself. _A friend_ , he thinks distantly, because they are not lovers, not like that – though somehow, he can tell she cares about him more than she probably should. She whispers something into his ear and he smiles, and she smiles back and stretches up on her toes to press a kiss to his cheek.

It’s strange, these emotions that he can see, that he can feel, that he can recognize, these parts of him that are coming back in waves, these things that are the gray in a muddy river between the black of bad and the white of good and he’s not _used_ to it, this middle ground and what it all means.

The whole thing confuses him, makes him feel violently ill in a way that his sessions never did, and he throws up once in the bushes before straightening again only to find the soldier, his companion, and even the redhead gone.

 

***

 

Sometimes, he watches from the roof, watches as the soldier makes himself dinner and talks on the phone, watches until the stereo stops and the light turns off and everything is dark and still and comfortable.

There are nights when the soldier comes back with a friend, and those are the nights that he doesn’t stay because he doesn’t think he needs to. But most times, he comes back alone, and after awhile it’s like a strange ritual, one where he needs to watch and make sure that the soldier is all right even though he doesn’t even know why.

 

***

 

There’s an exhibit at the Smithsonian, he overheard the soldier talking about it during one of his visits but he doesn’t know whether or not he wants to go, doesn’t know whether or not he wants to fully crack open the portions of him that have been thawing away like slabs of melted ice.

 _They will come for you,_ his brain says, and he looks at his reflection long and hard in the mirror of the gas station bathroom, tired eyes focusing on an even more tired face, one shaking hand gripping a razor that can’t seem to find its way to his chin. He chucks it in the trashcan before pulling his hat low over his eyes, slinking out into the shadows, the way he’s done for so many years and the way he knows he’ll continue to do until he feels safe enough otherwise.

 _They haven’t come for me yet_ , he tells the voice in his head, as if he’s determined to risk it anyway, and he thinks it’s the part of him that’s trying to come back, the part that he’s still unsure of letting in.

 

***

 

He waits until the crowds have cleared, until the last of the families have almost gone and he can walk through the walls lined with faces and names in as much solitude as he can manage, a march through time that feels like a personal and strange history lesson, a tutorial into a world that he lived in but doesn’t really remember enough of. A wall of patriotic color assaults his senses and he bypasses the droning narrative voice that tries to teach him about _the good old days_ , ending up in front of a large glass wall, one that stretches up higher than he thinks he can look. He stares from underneath the brim of his cap, a name and a picture that looks a little like him but it’s quite a full reflection, and a hell of a lot of text that makes him squint until he thinks he might pass out.

_Your name is James Buchanan Barnes._

He feels the presence behind him without really acknowledging it, and knows that when he turns around he will face his past, or maybe his future. He’s not sure he wants to know about either, because perhaps living in this strange new world would be easier without having any kind of an identity.

But he does it anyway.

 

***

 

“What do you draw?” Bucky asks after he’s helped inside the apartment, his eyes falling on the loose pages of paper stained with charcoal sketches. There’s one that looks like the woman in the cemetery and one that looks a little like someone he used to know, a tall boy with the same eyes and the same face, only he’s unrecognizable. The soldier notices his gaze, and snatches the papers up before he can look further.

“My past, sometimes,” he says, shoving them into a drawer. “The things I can’t say. But mostly my dreams.” There’s a pause, and an emotion Bucky might even classify as sad. “I have a lot of dreams.”

 _So do I_ , but he doesn’t say it, because he doesn’t really know how.

“I’ve been following you, too,” the soldier continues, and Bucky never tells him that he watched from the roof all those times, that he knows where everything is because he’s seen him put dishes away and fold the laundry and turn on the television. Maybe he will or maybe he never will, he still hasn’t figure it out yet, decides that maybe he doesn’t have to as strong arms guide him through the room, gently lowering him to the mattress of a bed that’s too big and too soft and too strange.

 

***

 

The first person that comes to visit is the dark-skinned man the Winter Soldier saw at the hospital, and he breezes into the apartment with the same familiarity that the Bucky felt when he was first brought inside. The difference, he realizes with a pang in his chest as he listens from the bedroom, is that this man has actually _been_ here whereas Bucky has only ever been on the outside looking in.

“Look, man, I said I’d help you find him but apparently he figured that part out on his own,” Sam says, leaning over the counter. “Keeping him here, trying to bring him back? That’s gallant, but that’s a whole different ballgame. That’s the kind of shit that they give you grade-A level psychologists for. Now, I know your group has fallen apart and all, but you gotta still be able to find one of those.”

Steve shakes his head, his hands pressing down onto the table. “I need to do this.”

Sam crosses his arms, looking him up and down dubiously. “And you’re not afraid he’s going to like, knife you to death in your sleep or something?”

Steve smiles wryly, running a hand though his hair. “He would’ve killed me a month ago if he really wanted to. Would’ve killed me a week ago, if he could. Maybe he’s not all here, but Bucky’s in there somewhere, and I’m gonna get him out, Sam. I owe him that.”

 _Bucky_.

It’s all coming back to him in bits and pieces that don’t make sense, that threaten to overwhelm his brain, and he’s not quite sure what to do about it.

 

***

 

On the fourth day, he decides to leave, because it’s all getting a little too strange and he still can’t figure anything out and the nightmares are getting worse, and he’s destroyed three pillows and two blankets and almost re-opened the soldier’s stitches in the past 48 hours. It’s just past five in the morning when he slips quietly out of bed and opens the window soundlessly, edging himself between the open space.

“Please don’t go,” says a voice quietly from somewhere behind him, and Bucky freezes, one foot tangled up in the drapes. “I need you.”

“I can’t stay here,” he returns in a voice that feels foreign, with emotions that feel even more foreign, and when he turns he thinks he can make out the beginnings of a frown on the soldier’s face.

“Why?”

It’s not accusatory, it’s not even questioning, it’s just quiet, a quiet understanding and gentleness that he doesn’t even think he deserves.

“Because I don’t even know who you are,” Bucky replies helplessly and, maybe for the first time ever, truthfully, because he doesn’t, and doesn’t know if he ever will. The soldier shrugs and smiles.

“A friend,” he says simply, undeterred, holding out his hand. “Your friend.”

Bucky looks down, debating whether or not he should move, whether or not he should accept the fingers stretching slowly towards him, and then the soldier speaks again softly, his voice a light in the darkness.

“I’ll take care of you.”

One hand comes to rest on his metal arm. It’s a gentle touch, a reminder that maybe he doesn’t need to know his name right now, and maybe he doesn’t even need to know who the soldier is, or why there’s a familiarity in the way that he laughs and smiles, or why they saved each other in the first place.

Maybe he doesn’t need to know.

Maybe he already does.

 


End file.
